WORCESTER SOCIETY. 213 



structioii into teacher's seminaries and Normal schools ? The 

 answer is, that while it is desirable to do so to some extent, it 

 is also in many respects impracticable to combine the two great 

 objects in such establishments without neutralizing both. Our 

 normal schools are to develope true ideas of teaching. They 

 act upon community by exhibiting and impressing upon public 

 opinion what correct instruction and good discipline are. They 

 are not expected to educate all our teachers. Far from it. If 

 one-tenth, or one-twentieth of them secure improved views and 

 practice, there will be an ample equivalent for the expense of 

 sustaining normal schools. And if the same, or even less pro- 

 portion of our teachers were to become interested, and qualified 

 to infuse agricultural elements into our common schools, the 

 whole State would be improved in these respects also. The 

 pupils of normal and the pupils of agricultural schools would 

 influence each other, and influence others, perhaps even some of 

 those from college. Again, agricultural schools are needed to im- 

 prove the intellectual state of the farming population. Let them 

 feel that there is a school for them, and our farmer's sons and 

 daughters will attend it. A large number who would otherwise 

 never attend a high school or academy, will save enough of time 

 and money to secure, at least, several months of study under su- 

 perior advantages of society and of instruction. We need such 

 means to call out our youth into society, before they settle down 

 for life in the retirement of the farm. What an advance of real 

 mental and moral worth might thus be secured, in addition to 

 the acquisition of some of those little civilities of fashionable 

 life, which would secure a degree of happiness in the social cir- 

 cle, too often unknown among awkward Jonathans. The time 

 is past when education and good manners are to be deprecated 

 as injurious to crops, — when a man's agricultural skill is to be 

 estimated as some estimate their compost heaps, by the degree 

 in which they disgust and ofi"end. Let our farmers and our 

 farmer's wives, be all of them well educated and polite, and 

 this alone would enhance every kind of property in value 

 throughout our country. And nothing could better promote 

 this object than the establishment of agricultural schools, 

 which farmer's children should feel to be theirs by right. 



